In January, UHD launched its new Center for Critical Race Studies (CCRS), housed in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, under the leadership of Dean DoVeanna Fulton.

The overall goal of the Center will be to produce scholars and citizens who are equipped to critically, actively and effectively engage racial issues confronting a technologically changing, postcolonial world. Rooted in interdisciplinary scholarship and social practices that attend to race, difference, culture and power, the Center will expand and make a unique contribution to foundational work begun at UCLA School of Law's Critical Race Studies Center.

CCRS will help to prepare each student to become a vital participant in Houston's social and economic future and the global community at large. The Center will serve students, the University and the community through teaching, research, the facilitation of public discourse, and the cultivation of social empowerment.

"A core tenet of the Center is that knowledge is not solely produced in the institution, that knowledge production happens in communities," said Fulton. "Therefore, one of the goals of CCRS is to bridge the divide between educational institutions and communities to create useful knowledge and approaches that address critical social justice concerns."

UHD officially inaugurated its Center for Critical Race Studies by hosting its first scholar-in-residence, Brittney Cooper, Ph.D., an internationally recognized expert on the African-American culture and assistant professor of Africana Studies and Women's Studies at Rutgers University. Students, faculty and the community were invited to attend her presentation, "When Blackness was in Vogue: Intersectionality and Post-Racial Politics."

This event drew an audience from the Greater Houston area and increased recognition of UHD as an institution committed to diversity, social justice and progress.